Split

Departing Dubrovnik Marina
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We woke up early today right around 6am, got about 1 or 2 hours of “oh no better not miss my alarm clock” sleep and began our 36 hour trek to Venice. It was really our fault, we just didn’t want to say goodbye to Dubrovnik and was out late till the early hours drinking at the Hemingway Bar where we met a very pleasant Irish couple who had just arrived that day.

We initially planned on taking the bus from Dubrovnik back to Split for our overnight ferry to Ancona, Italy but decided instead on taking the ferry from Dubrovnik to Split. We didn’t want to be on a crowded bus for 4-5 hours with our entire luggage and it worked out there was a Jadrolinija ferry leaving Dubrovnik at the same time. The Jadrolinija ferry company is the largest in Croatia and they will offer the most frequent and less expensive routes for pretty much all of Croatia and to the major ports along the Italian side of the Adriatic Sea. You should note this particular ferry was not listed anywhere on the Jadrolinija’s website, we only found out once we got here that it was available. We didn’t have any problems with tickets because it was not the high season yet, but if you are traveling between June-August you should call the local Jadrolinija ferry station you wish to depart from and confirm schedules and availability.

Travel Day

Approaching Korcula
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We departed Dubrovnik at 9am, made one stop at Korcula Island at 12:15pm, another at Hvar Island at 4:15pm and arrived into Split roughly at 6:15pm. You won’t have any time to get off the boat and explore, but it was nice to take pictures from the ship. We basically backtracked a third of our driving in Croatia by sea. It was definitely the better choice than the bus. We had our own section on the top deck for our entire luggage with two benches right next to each other for both of us to lie down and get some sleep along the way. It was very relaxing.

Leaving Croatia
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Arriving into Split, we had some time before our ship for Ancona was to depart at 9:00pm, so we grabbed a light dinner and stocked up on some groceries for the Italian leg of the trip. I would not recommend taking any of the Italian ferry lines to travel to and from Croatia. You can easily find the same route and availability with the Jadrolinija ferries but will probably pay 40-60% less because of the exchange rate. We were originally going to book with Blue Line Ferries, but their charge for a cabin room was around 220 Euros (about $350) where we got the same cabin room on Jadrolinija for around $110. After watching the sunset and departing Croatia for the last time around 9:30 we headed straight for our cabin and were sound asleep in about 5 minutes. We were beat!